The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for automatically placing phone calls to selected parties. More specifically, the invention provides for automatically placing phone calls to individuals specified by the calling party in response to a phone call by the calling party to an emergency service.
Currently, it is possible to expeditiously place a phone call to an emergency service provider. For example, by placing a single phone call to "911", a variety of emergency services can be dispatched to respond to the emergency. However, when an emergency situation occurs, the emergency service providers are not the only persons that the individual involved in the emergency situation would possibly like to contact. For example, the individual may want to contact family members, work associates, and neighbors, among others, to provide information to them about the occurrence and nature of the emergency and about the individual's current and future personal situation (e.g., expectations as to when the individual will contact the family members to more fully discuss the situation). However, during an emergency situation, the individual involved in the emergency may not always be able to immediately phone those persons that they would like to initially provide information to. This could be for a variety of reasons including a lack of time to place the phone calls or an inability to remember the phone numbers for the people to be called in this time of crises.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide for an apparatus and method for automatically placing phone calls to a selected set of individuals in response to a single phone call to an emergency service provider placed by the individual involved in the emergency situation. Such a system could provide initial notification to persons associated with the individual involved in the emergency that the individual was involved in an emergency and to provide any other additional information that the affected individual would like to convey. In this manner, a single phone call to an emergency service provider could automatically initiate phone calls to other desired individuals.